Toba-Fushimi Battle was the end of a series of epoch-making struggles in Kyoto. The struggles had started with Terada-ya Inn incident. Terada-ya was a port-town inn along Goh-kawa Canal in Fushimi. In the incident, moderate royalists assassinated radical royalists. History repeats itself. The less 2 sects have in common; the more fiercely they fight each other. Sakamoto Ryoma, one of the biggest historical characters at Bakumatsu, the end of Tokugawa Shogunate, narrowly escaped from the assassination. We walked west to Fushimi Port Park, which was made reclaiming most of the port. The park has a model wharf, and a model "ju-koku bune" (a boat with a carrying capacity of 10 bales of rice). Walking north for a while, we got to the confluence of Takase-gawa Canal and Goh-kawa Canal. If you sail up the former canal, you can get to the center of Kyoto. At the end of the canal, you will even find Omi-ya, where Ryoma was finally assassinated a year and 10 months after the Terada-ya Inn incident. If you sail east along the latter, you get in front of Terada-ya. Those used to be one of his hideouts. Terada-ya is still run as ryokan, a Japanese style hostel. Actually, my mother in-law once stayed there. When my younger daughter had heard about that, she had exclaimed, "Ii-nah!" (How fancy it is!) Goh-kawa Canal runs east-west in front of Terada-ya. From just around the corner from the inn, a tiny street runs north-south, whose nickname is Ryoma-dori Street. Against our expectations, it was not so busy. Souvenir shops were not so dense, and sightseers were scarce. We kept walking toward the eastern hills, one of whose tops used to have Fushimi Castle, to find the Fushimi Bugyosho site. We walked eastward along Ohte-suji Shopping Mall, and crossed the Keihan Line by Fushimi-Momoyama Station. The mall was busy with the New Year's sale, and the station was surrounded with cram schools. The streets were jammed with cars to pick up and drop off young pupils. Once Prime Minister Chatchai in Thailand put forward the famous slogan to "convert Indochina from the battle field to the market." Are we pioneers of the idea? Or are we just raising another type of warrior? "Yonohito-wa ware-wo nani-tomo yuwa-ba ie. Waga nasu koto-wa ware nomizo shiru." (Sakamoto Ryoma) Whatever may others say of me. It's only I myself who knows where I go. I wonder if we know where we are going.

Teradaya is a historical inn, where Ryoma Sakamoto was attacked and injured. If you are interested in Japanese history, the visit of this place should be interesting. But the building is not the original.